Off the Shelf is our section for creative works by medical students.
Medical Student Editor
Georgetown University School of Medicine
Daniel graduated from Tufts University in 2004. His subsequent pursuits included everything from cell cycle research to manufacturing shampoo. Medically, his interests lie in emergency and wilderness medicine, infectious disease, and health care sustainability. Daniel is medical student at the Georgetown University School of Medicine, Class of 2017.
I am worried. I am worried because of what Lungs told me. I have been friends with Lungs a long time and he would not lie to me. “Big Brain is trying to kill us.” This is what Lungs said. I do not want to believe it, but Big Brain is smart and bad. There was one time Big Brain made Man jump out of an airplane.
A flannel button-up and house shoes wear a man / Sitting to my left, with a right ear just trying to keep up appearances; / Just as deaf to the / echo of firework safety / Then, / As to my voice / Now.
Whenever someone hang glides, / They pick a place to land. / Somewhere soft and somewhere close, / Somewhere that they planned.
My thumb is on the white plunger: first stop / and now the pipette is ready to suck. / My hand is trembling, hovering over / the small plastic tube. I dip it down and in, / release the plunger, and draw it all inside.
You claim that my choice breaks your heart, / as if mine isn’t shattered and cracked. / You think I don’t know how beautiful he’d be, /or wonder how he’d walk, talk and act.
Closing his eyes, he reaches out his hand and feels. He feels the texture, the rise and fall of the terrain, lines criss-crossing at various angles and various thickness. It is like bark, he thinks, of a small tree. The surface has no discernible pattern. It is not smooth yet the undulations are certainly not bumps; they are more like ridges. He wonders at its softness, its warmth, and he passes his fingers over it until his palm comes into contact as well, his whole hand now feeling, touching.
In this piece I hoped to portray that while physicians are healers who often hold life in their hands, in many ways, it is the patients who give life to the physicians. Each patient we see is a unique hue or brushstroke in our medical training and careers, adding color and texture which transforms an otherwise monochromatic existence into a full spectrum of experiences.
Stunted by the shadow of its flow / pouring, rumbling in a lifelong swing / through the raging heart of darkness rings / the steadfast drip: a weak and lonely bruit, / and pitting insult in the turbid skin / with shocking faults to grimly thinning walls / the fallen house still stands; the flagging strands / and edematous sands chafe the burning soles.
Burnout / They say dreamers aren’t doctors / So they kill the dream / Tests with trivial details we have barely seen, / let alone remember.
“He is beyond the help of human aid” / He quoted from the big book / He stared directly at me as he spoke / And that one line was all it took
A poem about gross anatomy from our writer-in-training Damien Zreibe.
A poem from our writer-in-training Brent Schnipke about his experience abroad.
Medical Student Editor, Writer-in-Training and Columnist Emeritus
Boonshoft School of Medicine at Wright State University
Brent Schnipke is a third year medical student at Wright State University Boonshoft School of Medicine in Dayton, OH. He is a 2014 graduate of Mount Vernon Nazarene University with a degree in Biology. His professional interests include writing, medical humanities, and higher education. When he's not studying, he can be found reading at a local coffee shop, training for his next race, or planning an adventure with his wife. Brent is also active on social media and can be reached on Twitter and Instagram @brentschnipke.
Prints, Pages, and Pagers
Prints, Pages, and Pagers aims to look closely at the lives of medical students and doctors, real or fiction, whose lives and experiences are told in novels, short stories, poetry, or any kind of writing. These book reviews are an opportunity for medical students to learn from the many fascinating stories produced by the field of medicine, and maybe to read something other than a textbook.
